Bright Stars
by marianne in chains
Summary: Sirius and Bellatrix were always at odds. The Blacks, from the beginning to the end.


Well, I tried. I like it, at least.

-

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black has five children in this generation, all beautiful and healthy, none with lazy eyes or mental afflictions, as many of the family's past offspring had. Andromeda is quick and clever and kind, so two out of three isn't all bad, and there's a black sheep in every group. Regulus is soft-spoken but obedient and malleable, so his mother doesn't mind his presence. Narcissa, too, is quick to do as she is told, but there is steel beneath her silk and she is beautiful; she will make a good marriage.

Sirius and Bellatrix are the crowning jewels of the family, the two always introduced to friends at parties, and first in their parents' wills. They have Narcissa's strength without her pliancy, Andromeda's intelligence without her softness, and they both have more magical power than any of their siblings or cousins combined.

They get on marvelously for nine years, until they get into Andromeda's first-year Hogwarts' books. Potions gets tossed in the corner, along with Herbology, History of Magic, and, once they realize that the Defense Against the Dark Arts text really is about defense through awareness and not nasty Dark Arts spells, that too. Eventually they're left with only her Charms and Transfigurations books, and after a lengthy debate, decide the Charms book would be the best starting place.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Bellatrix screams delightedly, swishing her hand about in the air. Nothing happens, and Sirius suppresses a snort.

"Bad luck, Bella. Better let me have a try." Sirius, as it turns out, has no better luck, and it is Bellatrix's turn to laugh. "Oh, shut up," Sirius snaps, "it's not like you could do it either."

They glare at each other for a good solid minute before their eyes widen and they have the same idea.

"Wands!" Sirius burst out, just seconds before Bellatrix exclaims, "We need wands!"

"Whose should we use, do you think?" Sirius wonders, and Bellatrix stops to think.

"Not Andromeda's," she begins.

"But she'd definitely let us borrow it," Sirius counters.

"Yeah, but it probably wouldn't work for us," Bellatrix tells him, a haughty sneer on her face. Andromeda has never been her favorite sister.

"There's no way my mother would let us use hers," Sirius muses, "but my father…"

"He's probably not _in a state_," Bellatrix giggles, "to notice whether or not we've borrowed his."

Sirius draws his brows together at Bellatrix's laugh, but shrugs it off. "It's probably in his study. C'mon!"

They make their way towards Mr. Black's study, alternately tearing through empty rooms and peeking around corners to avoid running into more alert adults. Luckily, the study door is wide open, and Sirius steals in while Bellatrix keeps an eye out for anyone who might catch them. When Sirius emerges just a minute later, the wand (mahogany and unicorn tail) clutched in his hand, they share a grin that straddles the line between mischievous and evil.

Back in the safety of Sirius' room, Sirius grabs the wand and intones, "Wingardium Leviosa!" The wand sort of twitches and makes an odd sputtering sound but the book he was pointing at shoots up and nearly hits the ceiling before Sirius is able to force it into stillness.

"My turn!" Bellatrix yanks the wand away and the book falls to the ground with a loud smack. Both of them pause and wait for the inevitable scream of, "If you've broken anything it's the dungeons for you," from Sirius' mother, or Kreacher's sudden appearance with a broom and dustpan. Surprisingly enough, nothing happens, so they shrug it off and Bellatrix whispers "Wingardium Leviosa," and the book floats up about two feet off the ground.

"Mine went higher," Sirius taunts.

"At least I have some control," Bellatrix snaps back.

"Maybe you're just not as powerful as I am."

"That's a lie and you know it, Sirius Black," Bellatrix hisses, "and I'll prove it to you the minute we get our own wands."

-

They get wands of their own on their tenth birthdays; the Blacks like to let their offspring have a full year or so of practice before shipping them off to Hogwarts. After a brief lecture from Mrs. Black about wand safety, or, as it is in the Black household, Things That, If You Hex Them, Will Hex You Back And Probably Worse, Sirius and Bellatrix run upstairs.

"Mine's longer," Bellatrix squeals in delight.

"Mine's made of ebony. What's yours of, Bella?"

"Walnut," she mutters, "but, I've got dragon heartstring, you've got unicorn hair, I bet." The thought makes her perk up, and Sirius pouts.

"Phoenix feather, actually."

"Still isn't dragon, is it?"

"Oh, sod off, Bella."

"Don't get all prissy now, Sirius," she taunts, and Sirius raises his wand into the dueling position they've known since they were old enough to remember.

"Bet you can't beat me," he replies, and Bellatrix's eyes light up, a rarer occurrence these days.

"Watch me," and before they can bow Bellatrix fires off a hex, which, of course, Sirius sees coming, since he had the same idea, and therefore dodges. He sends back a basic spell which graze Bellatrix's elbow and causes her lips to snarl in something between pain and aggravation. Her next hex is nastier and catches Sirius on the back of his knee. He trips but manages to hit Bellatrix square in the chest.

As she goes down, though, she hits Sirius in turn, and they both lie on the ground, panting.

"Draw," neither of them pants out, but it's understood in the way they pocket their wands and rearrange the room to look like nothing at all happened.

-

They spar a few more times before Hogwarts, but most of their time is spent at their respective houses, Bella's in a different part of London, and so when they do clash, it makes Narcissa squeal with delight and anticipation of her own tenth birthday. They fight last a week before that first train ride. Bellatrix wins.

-

Sirius still isn't talking to Bellatrix when they arrive at Platform 9 3/4, so with all the pride of a Black, he tosses his hair, already too shaggy to be respectable, and storms off to find someone else to sit with. That's when he meets James Potter, who's the loudest person around by a mile, and he and Sirius immediately start comparing their favorite pranks.

When they shake hands, first, Sirius doesn't think that this will amount to anything, and that's reinforced when James goes on about Gryffindor, and how every Potter for generations has been one. Until he sees Bellatrix on the train, a mad whirl of Black elegance, who only raises an eyebrow at him and his current company, and James Potter looks like a much better future after all.

-

Everything that follows his Sorting is expected, though James can't hide his shock at the Howler his mother sends when she gets the news, presumably from Bellatrix. It makes Sirius' heart burn, but more from anger and hatred than any sort of sadness. For the first time in his life he feels a sort of carefree joy, and, being Sirius, runs with it. He spends the next six years terrorizing Hogwarts and still managing to be near, if not the top in all his classes, much to Regulus', Bellatrix's, and the rest of his relative's distress.

They call Regulus a failure and a disgrace because he doesn't have Sirius' enormous bounty of ability, and they don't call Bellatrix a failure at all, since she's now the sole scion of the Family Black.

Sirius, though, Sirius isn't a failure, strictly, and magic and its keepers rely heavily on the true names of things, but he is a traitor, and the lowest scum imaginable because of it, so his family, already prickly and distant in the way of all old, rich families in every country, Muggle or not, turns against him, and none more vehemently than Bellatrix, now the apple of the Black eye.

Sirius can take it, for the most part, but he's not a Slytherin for a reason, he can't push this aside and focus on what he has now, which is the admiration and even love of his crazy uncle, and three of the best friends a boy could hope for.

Not until sixth year does everything go to hell, a combination of Regulus and his mother and Sirius' own spitfire nature. The day his mother kicks him out Sirius doesn't even pack a bag as he runs out of 12 Grimmauld Place, where no one can Apparate, and out into the frozen streets of London.

The last sound from the other side of the door is a cackling laugh he used to know in its brighter days.

-

The next time he's around Bellatrix for longer than a minute in the corridors, they're just cells apart in Azkaban. Azkaban is filled to bursting with Voldemort's ilk, but Sirius' ward, called by the wardens Black Row, hosts the cream of the crop. The wardens, when they come once a day to deliver food and, on special days, to drag bodies out or lead new inmates in, affect posh East London accents and pretend to give each other tours through the great manors whose masters now languish in chains. The wardens might be madder than their charges, Sirius thinks when he hears the laughter, so much like crows', until he hears Bellatrix laugh in answer, high and clear.

He doesn't think she knows he's here. Or maybe she does. Bellatrix may be mad, Sirius is certain of that, but that doesn't mean she isn't still razor sharp. If she does, then she knows that he didn't commit any crimes in Voldemort's name.

In the long, dark night of Azkaban, before he remembers the use of his Animagus form, it nearly drives Sirius mad. He left his family, betrayed their name, did everything he could to set himself apart from the House of Black, and here he was, in the same place as their chosen daughter.

And madness finds a home in her so easily, he fears it will take him, too.

-

But it doesn't. He escapes, finds what is left of the life he once had: Remus and Harry. And he tries. He tries to start again, but there's no time for him to learn a life without fear, because the threat of Voldemort hangs over them like a heavy curtain, veiling the happiness he forgot in Azkaban. After Hogwarts he lives in caves and shacks for months, until Dumbledore needs 12 Grimmauld place and he finds himself on his old doorstep.

That he can even walk inside the house is a miracle, and it's only when his mother's portrait starts shrieking that he really feels safe at all. Over the months that remain he schemes to remove her but knows he never will; she's his mother, and she's doing what she does best, but cleaning out the rest of the house, removing lurking spirits and burning half a dozen sets of strangling sheets, for instance, slowly clears out his soul.

But as he lets go of the hatred, the fear of his childhood room, the lingering anger, all that's left is a need for revenge. All he thinks about is James and Lily strewn on their floor, the floor of the house Lily had fixed up just months before.

Remus, of course Remus, sees this and sits with him when Grimmauld place is empty and he is filled with ghosts. Remus touches his back and says nothing but understands, as he always understood, all the pain in the world wrapped up in one pale, tired, body. Once, there had been something. Once.

Now nothing remains, so it only makes sense for him to go to the Department of Mysteries in Remus' wake, but Remus turns and says, "Sirius." He keeps his voice calm, but his eyes are pleading, and Sirius wants to listen, almost.

"Remus, I have to." He has a legion of reasons prepared but what it really comes down to is that Harry is in danger.

Remus looks like he's going to disagree, always the Prefect, always the responsible boy, but he only shakes his head. "Come on, then."

-

Sirius went to the Department of Mysteries once, during the first war (and why they call it that he doesn't know, still, because war has battles and soldiers and clearly drawn lines, and Voldemort believes in none of those things). He snuck in with James, under the Invisibility Cloak, guided by Remus' meticulous research. Nothing had come of the trip; someone had been tipped off to their arrival, the first sign of a spy within their ranks. The thought of it still makes Sirius' blood boil.

He's not thinking about James and Lily, though, nor Peter and Remus when he was young, only of Harry, and then, when he sees the Death Eaters furled out before him, of revenge. Bellatrix is here, with her hair piled madly on her head, dressed like the lady of the House, and Sirius knows what he has to do.

It worries him to leave Remus behind for a second, and not to run to Harry, but he knows that all that would do hinder his godson, so he catches Bellatrix's eyes and it's almost like they're ten all over again. The only Death Eater he hates more than dear cousin Bella is Peter, for whom he's reserved a level of anger and loathing so deep that honestly, he can't imagine being faced with that rat again.

She fires off the first curse and it misses him by three inches, almost a mile where he and Bella are concerned, but then again, they're both still shaking off the dust of Azkaban.

His countercurse grazes her elbow and makes her smile wide, with too many of her teeth showing for comfort and she shouts at him, "So they finally let you out of your cage, little Dog!"

"And you out of yours, you mad bitch!" All around them Harry and his friends (only children! Sirius pauses to think) are swapping spells with Voldemort's best, and Sirius tries to keep his attention focused solely on Bellatrix. It's not exactly hard to do, since she's been more recently in practice than he, and she's as ruthless as he remembers from their childhood.

She fights dirty, dirtier than Sirius, even, who just resorts to odd angles and childish distractions where Bella aims to maim, at the very least, with every shot. He doesn't realize, then, that she's maneuvered him to the middle of the room, where his back is open and everyone can see if, by some freak chance she should win.

Of course, Sirius isn't an arrogant child anymore, and he knows that scales are weighted in Bellatrix's favor.

So when it's just a Stunning Spell, a beautiful font of red light, that catches him in the chest, he's momentarily relieved; maybe she'll leave him there for a moment, grace others with her lovely presence. But instead of falling to the ground and lying there with his back smarting, fabric brushes against him, and there's a terrible cold at his back, curling up over his shoulders and drawing him in.

He knows this is what death feels like, known it since Azkaban, maybe even before. The Black children were, in many ways, raised on death. But he shouldn't be dead, he shouldn't be leaving Harry behind. Sirius can already see his godson trying to run to where Sirius is falling, but Remus won't let him. Won't let either of them. In the background the others are still fighting, even his mad cousin, and something about her almost breaks his heart, but it's too late.

Bella's laughter chases him down the abyss.


End file.
